Review - Were The World Mine
I have been rubbish about my intention to review at least one thing each week on this here blog. But I vow that this will change. Starting now.
Went to see this unexpected gem last night on a whim of The Mrs’.
Plot: Queer teen Timothy lives in small town America and attends an exclusive all-boys school courtesy of the sacrifices of Donna, his single parent mother. He is bullied and ridiculed at school and has a crush on the star rugby player, Jonathan. Outside of school he hangs out with Max (male) and Frankie (female) who like each other but won’t admit it. The senior year play, overseen by ‘eccentric’ teacher Ms Tebbit is A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and while studying lines in a copy of the play she gives him, Timothy finds a magically hidden recipe for the love potion used in the play. Liberally dispensing it around his schoolmates and the citizens of the very homophobic town he opens their eyes to some new alternatives. With songs.
Oh yes. I may have forgotten to mention this is a musical.
Opinion: Twelve years ago I walked out of the film version (though not the earlier play, interestingly) of Beautiful Thing uplifted and happy, and with a significant yearning for an out and proud gay youth I wished I’d had*. Were The World Mine gave me a similar though not quite as intense experience. It’s a great little film (emphasis on the ‘little’; there are no big names, and when the credits roll the first couple of minutes feel like they only have a couple of names on display who seem to have done everything) that manages to take a clearly fantastic story and present it in a relatively grounded way (setting aside the songs for a minute). Timothy and his world are presented in simple terms and nothing is very well developed, but that’s just cinematic shorthand and the film doesn’t suffer for it. Each main character has their own plot thread, whether it’s Donna’s new job as a Mary Kay-style cosmetics saleswoman or Frankie’s unacknowledged love for Max, and the plotting brings it all together neatly and without too much contrivance. The presentation of the play-within-the-film (and the fact that it’s the Dream at all of course, which drives the whole plot) adds a couple of layers that give the film more depth than might otherwise be the case, and the line between the two ‘worlds’ is sufficiently blurry that the whole presentation is pretty seamless. On top of which, the mystical nature of the script book, and the mystery of where it came from (who exactly is Ms Tebbit?), are presented in a totally matter-of-fact way which helps avoid any danger of an audience “wha?” moment. The film is also warm, funny, and very, very human.
And then there’s the music. A lot of the lyrics are actually from (and even more are inspired by) the play, and without exception I thought they worked extremely well. The musical styles vary throughout, and considering this is indeed a small film with a number of first time performers, the singing itself, often the weak link in even big musicals, is great. I bought the album this morning, which hopefully tells you something.
I don’t think there’s anything I wouldn’t commend about the film, and I suspect the only reason it didn’t have quite the emotional impact of Beautiful Thing on me is because you don’t get that more than once.
One additional thing that both The Mrs and I noted is that even though a lot of the cast are first-timers, we spent most of the film looking at them wondering what else we’d seen them in. Everyone looks like someone else. Zelda Williams (Frankie) looks like Rachel Stevens. Wendy Robie (Ms Tebbit) pretty much is Katherine Helmond, and try as I might I can’t fathom why Judy McLane (Donna) seems so familiar, because according to IMDB she’s only ever done this film, and her own site outlines a theatrical career which I’ve certainly never intersected with.
The film, which is based on Director Tom Gustafson’s own earlier short film Fairies seems mostly to be running at festivals and ‘art’ cinemas, but if you can track it down, please try. I think you’ll enjoy it. Official site.
* EDIT: because I suddenly realised how that could be read. ’A yearning that I’d been out and proud in my youth myself’ is what I meant.